The Anime Of 2019

Anime in 2019 is something I observed very closely as always. It’s my tenth year of watching seasonals and once again, I have finished quite a large number of shows so let’s see what the best anime of 2019 were and what else I’ve finished!

Hey there. Remember when I did a list of the anime of 2018 that I finished? I remember! Anyway, we’re obviously going to do the same for last year as well! As always, this list doesn’t include movies and only includes TV anime that ended this year. This means that Babylon is out due to its questionable release schedule but JoJo which started the year before is in. As they should be. I have also decided to forfeit my backlog post for 2020, it just didn’t seem worth the hassle. My annual joke awards have been moved towards the end of this post conclusively. 

To prelude this, I wouldn’t call 2019 a good year for anime and I’d deem it slightly weaker than the previous one. Regardless, it had some nice offerings here and there. Anything not mentioned here I either haven’t seen or I’ve simply dropped it. I have no intentions of writing reviews for an anime I didn’t finish or making any conclusive statements on unfinished series in general – to which I challenge the Crunchyroll awards. Let’s be better and also keep it simple so it’s time to kick this off already. 

Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-dono yo.: This one is the latest Mari Okada anime and considering that my experience with her from HanaIro to a long list of other series has been almost nothing but dismal (with Kiznaiver being her best work to date), clearly this had no chance of being any good… is what I’d like to say but then I got a very honest coming of age story about a group of girls with more experience on literature than worldly desires as puberty suddenly slaps them right in their faces. What we get is a genuinely interesting, emotionally charged story that’s surprisingly clever about adolescence and sexuality. For the longest time even, I was sure that this was the first good Okada anime I had seen. Buuuuuut then things slowly went down the drain as the final two episodes provide little payoff for the long journey and more grounded character conflicts were hurried to a close with a finale that felt just kinda out there and too Okada-ish for my liking. In its final spurt, what I dislike about her writing so much sadly had crept in once more. Oh well, it was fine enough regardless and certainly a standout title. Decent.

Beastars: Orange’s second attempt to worm itself into the people’s hearts after Houseki no Kuni with CG that actually works. Though I do have to remark that much like with Houseki no Kuni, the biggest downfall of CG usually tends to happen with human character models and Beastars has none of those. Anyway, overall, I am not quite as on board with it as others are – its animal civilization is interesting per se but even after 12 episodes, I have no idea how it works outside of Legosi’s school life and the generic black market. You have an interesting setting, use it. Legosi’s personal strife through a life he’s not sure he can fully grasp and how to be in control of fares better but just as there are interesting sides to his character, the entire romance plot primarily makes him resemble an oblivious harem protagonist at times. It’s weird how for a series this unique, its utterly generic parts sure can drag on quite a bit. Overall, Loius is easily the strongest link but luckily, we got plenty of him. Visually, it’s also decent enough as every now and then, it does something far beyond just having neat character models but contrary to a certain show on gem people, only every now and then, that is. Is it a second Houseki no Kuni? No. Is it still worth a watch a reason to look forward to its sequel? Yes. Decent. 

Boogiepop wa Warawanai: There was no way this was going to look as good as its PV, was there? Maybe there was. But rushing Madhouse to cram 18 episodes into a single season after a major delay (never a good sign) did not help. There was one arc that had sakuga at least but neither the coloring nor character designs were helping and directional effort was largely absent. As such, Natsume’s best project remains the very conservative in production ACCA of all things, not unexpectedly however. Anyway, the writing was largely uneven too. Boogiepop Barely Appears In Her Own Story And Who Even Is That Irrelevant Nagi Girl was mostly a pseudo-philosophical, at times pretentious mess and none of the chuuni content clicked for me, ultimately undercutting its more serious tone but I’ll give it that it was interesting enough with some high notes inbetween and the OST was pretty good, not to mention it kept me around for 18 episodes without regretting it so while my criticism is harsh… look, its respective season was baaaad. It wasn’t a revitilization story for Kadokawa either, effectively putting this on the list of another failed LN franchise revival alongside Kino and Index but it certainly fared a lot better than either of these two. And hey, you’re obligated to get through this to watch Phantom and isn’t that what we’re here for? Decent.

Carole and Tuesday: This is an an odd duck. I very much hesitated to put this on my annual 3×3. When there’s so much of political commentary that doesn’t say anything interesting and falls completely flat, an anime is doing something fundamentally wrong. It was very obvious to me there was no way it could possibly ever recapture the glory of its Mars Brightest arc but how much it lost focus and quality still hurt quite a lot. But it also very much is that one music anime that covers a whole range of genres through many, many different performances and characters throughout its run and I appreciate that very much. Not to mention its finale was utterly brilliant against all expectations. It certainly did achieve the top of its very own genre so you know what? On my 2019 3×3 it is. (Also, Pyotr BEST BOY.) Decent.

Choujin Koukousei-tachi wa Isekai demo Yoyuu de Ikinuku you desu!: Hey, I think this is the only isekai drivel I’ve finished this year. Only one. That’s pretty good actually. I challenge the rest of you to that. Anyway, was this one less awful than the others? No, you bet it wasn’t. That was very obvious from the start when the world’s leading seven teenage prodigies got transported into another world so they could build their own nation with their quasi superpowers. I don’t use the term “cringe” lightly but what’s exactly what the first episode was and many unpleasantries were to follow. And yet, I still stuck with this show and its very unhealthy obsession of mayonnaise. It had a sword girl who was actually fun, the villains felt like threats, Winona was the BEST GIRL of her season (with absolutely no screentime whatsoever of course), the Merchant was a cool bro, I ended up liking several characters and it kept going along nicely where other anime would usually come to a standstill. Also, it kept making the female characters’ tails wiggle for almost all of the time and I think this is the only anime that did that. It’s the small victories that count. So, in retrospect, I can at least see why I finished this. Is it downright idiotic? Yes. At the end of the day though, I can’t hate an anime for being stupid when it’s this fun. Bad.

Dororo: This is my second Tezuka story and while I was lukewarm on the first, this one I turned out to be even less enthuastic about. Dororo pretends to be this great character study and take on mankind but I can’t say anything in particular of value came out of it when almost all of its story was this utterly generic, bog-standard dark adventure story. There are no characters, nor any interesting conflicts but it sure likes to beat you over the head with both its character drama and the oh-so-tragic dilemma of being either human or… not. Hyakkimaru occasionally even gets portrayed as a monster for slaying monsters in a slightly more cruel and insane way than usually during a few episodes. Guys, I’m not swallowing this, it’s all empty talk and at the end of the day, the poorest attempt at social commentary I’ve seen in quite a while. Ultimately, Dororo feels like an anime that promises that it has a ton to say but at the end of the day just turned out to be a big nothing-burger. Go watch Casshern Sins. Go play Soul Sacrifice Delta. This is not it. Mediocre.

Egao no Daika: Egao no Daika is one of those shows that I should have dropped when I had the chance to but briefly decided to show some promise before slowly but surely degrading itself into turdville to ridiculous degrees. The base premise of this thing shows some aspiration and goodwill despite its lack of originality – Us Versus Them: The War – Featuring Both Sides – but at some point, that gimmick of “they’re all good people, war is pointless!” starts wearing thin really quickly and the soulless body count dropping for shock effect and tragedy purposes didn’t help either. Sure, occasionally it got a death scene right but none towards the end as the show was hindered by massive production problems (character melting, yay!), pacing issues and it became increasingly transparent that there really wasn’t much to it in the first place not to mention that halfway through, you could take a good guess that the finale would be a rushed shitshow forcing a happy end to ridiculous degrees down my throat and that’s precisely what we got. Time badly spent. Bad.

Granbelm: This really hasn’t been a good year, or, heck, even decade for mecha anime, has it? And for its first fourth or so, it looked like Granblem was no exception to that, starting out with an in medias res episode that grabbed absolutely nobody only to deliver exposition in spades thereafter on a magical setting without showing much magic in the process or getting us to care about the characters. Yet as the show went on, it somehow found its way, made leaps and bounds in terms of quality and gave me a fun, emotional and high tension mecha anime. Granbelm is understood by its talented staff as a passion project and tribute towards 2D mecha animation and from its snappy writing to its delightful audiovisual execution, I certainly could feel the passionate will of everyone involved seap through. Granbelm succeeds as a character drama, as a mecha anime and if you want cute girls – well, let’s just say that I liked the characters a lot as well. Mangetsu a cute, Suishou a subtle lewd. There are still parts that make me scratch my head, sure, but all in all, I very much appreciate what this anime did. Good.

Given: Look, I can watch shounen ai too. Well, it also being about music and being the first character driven noitaminA anime in quite a while also helped. I guess it’s the most traditional series on that block in recent memory. Anyway, this one is about guy love and I’m talking actual guy love and not just this pretend bullshit that plagues anime so much. Not any less important are its struggling band antics, luckily not limited to a school club but also containing actual adults. And we have some social issues regarding suicide and anxiety too. The visuals don’t look too shabby either. All in all, it does most of this stuff well enough for a low-key drama series that’s pretty chill but also knows how to pack a punch or two occasionally but the use of some SD elements doesn’t mesh well and I wouldn’t call any of it particularly groundbreaking or its characters all too memorable. It also relies on its sequel movie to come to a bigger conclusion even though its main character arc had a satisfying ending to it. Regardless, while I’m not floored by it, it made for substantial enough seasonal entertainment I presume. Decent.

Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu: Boy, was this forgettable. And yet, apparently the only thing that started in its season that I also finished while watching it live. Maybe I should have picked up Kono Oto Tomare after all. Or perhaps I shouldn’t have dropped Fruits Basket so early. No wait, I did pick it up again and that stayed bad. Or Kimetsu no Yai- nah, that one I don’t think I regret. Anyway, this is half a paragraph dedicated to my seasonal woes instead of Hitoribocchi because there is nothing to say about the show itself. Bocchi is anxious as she’s bad at making friends. Bocchi then makes friends who all also have character traits displayed by their names. It surfs on its mediocrity without much fanfare, occasionally having a nice moment or two and the WAHAHA ending was pretty great and wholesome. Actually, its regular ending was pretty neat too. I also liked Nako or at least did when she was someone who cared about Bocchi in her own way but that quickly faded so she could be mean and tsukkomi towards Aru instead. Anyway, I think I have written enough. There really isn’t a lot to say about this. Mediocre.

Hoshiai no Sora: From the creator of Noein comes a well-animated sports anime dealing with serious topics like parental abuse, treading some new ground as it wraps all of that around soft tennis and how said sport has a positive effect on these troubled adolescents. Well, that sounds very promising and made for a genuine and decent beginning, so what could possibly go wrong? Turns out, a lot. First of all, this thing has too many characters whose names I couldn’t even be bothered to remember, largely defined by nothing but whatever talking point against a social issue this anime brings along. Secondly, every single club member has parental issues to rather comical degrees. Thirdly, the entire soft tennis angle is so poorly written wherein our protagonist figures out the weakness of the much stronger opponents, being the sole brain of the show and then rubs it in and he does that every single time. Careful! The other team is bad at teamplay! Now we need to do teamplay things! Aww yes, we’re on the winning track! Because, you see, soft tennis is not a game of experience and training but psychological rock-paper-scissors wherein the opponents have their weak spots written on their bodies like video game bosses. And last and also very least, the whole show got canned halfway through as confirmed by its director on twitter. That is tragic, yes, but ultimately renders this entire anime a pointless waste of time. Yes, it was entertaining enough and had some interesting things to point out but I disagree that its writing is unorthodox or special. Its themes and what is has to say are. But that’s not the actual writing, which largely just turned out to be pedestrian. And, as we all know now, went absolutely nowhere. Bad.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: This was a ridiculously frustrating experience. Its middle third was unspeakingly good and for the longest time it looked like we might have our best TV JoJo yet. Yeah, the characters on their own weren’t as memorable as the first three parts’ but the stand battles had reached a high in terms of writing and the production was smooth and ambitious. La Squadra also made for a really cool villain gallery. This anime practically had it in the bag. Then it turned out the bag had a hole in the form of a weak final antagonist completely underdelivering in a finale more concerned with a body swapping gimmick rather than building up its characters or battles towards a satisfying conclusion. While also bringing back Polnareff to have him deliver exposition and… well. You know. There is some thematic value to be had in what it attempted to do with its last few episodes but was it worth it to derail a story that would have been much better had it gone the tried and tested route? No. With all that said and done, it was still one of the strongest anime of 2019 but the overall aftertaste stings. Good.

Joushikousei no Mudazukai: Yo. Mic Check. JK. Well, for what it’s worth, JoshiMuda had a really catchy opening that you can’t get out of your head even if you tried. And the rest of the show is surprisingly solid as well actually. I’m not one for comedy anime usually but this had the occasionally funny gag and, more importantly, enjoyable oddball characters who, while still primarily defined by their gimmicks, made for some rather pleasing interactions. I know it’s a nonsense show first and foremost but despite that, didn’t annoy me and much rather became my low-key chill fast food of the season. With that said, the episodic character focus grew really stale fast however and depended on the quality of the characters themselves, which were… hit or miss so at the end of the day, I’d hardly call this something you should totally pay your attention to rather than a small personal victory for me on not missing out on it but for what it’s worth, it was entirely servicable enough and there certainly were some really noteworthy moments towards the end. More than I could say for most anime I suppose. Decent.

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Tensai-tachi no Renai Zunousen: It’s one of the few romcoms out there with likable characters and charming moments and somehow managed to land with most of its comedy segments despite the premise being something that doesn’t sound particularly hilarious or like something that you can get a joke out of after reading the premise blurb. Not that it couldn’t get redundant but for the most part, it had a high level of energy and the heart in the right place. Hatakeyama’s directing also helped immensely which goes to show that his capabilities are well-versed in different genres. Primarily, it was mindless fluff but well-done enough and with astounding moments of quality and some really good directing backing it up. Decent.

Kanata no Astra: A space adventure show? That sounds neat! Sadly however, it’s largely plagued by shounen tropes, particularly in regards to tonal comedic shifts that just don’t fit. But hey, we can overlook these things if the rest fits, right? I’m not sure if it fits though. It certainly does have some unorthodox moments and packs punches I wouldn’t have expected it to do so. It also handles some things with more grace than expected but at the end of the day, if oftentimes felt like these characters were rather half-assed and one note, getting their respective backstory to be spelled out in front of everyone before returning to the state of being background noise. Their background stories usually also only explain their motivations at best but don’t have much of an influence on the plot per se because the show is way too fascinated with its weak survival aspect of deadly plants and animals making characters run away or solve some really basic puzzles to get out of hairy situations that they really shouldn’t have survived. Worse, with the plot twists, a lot of times, you get something potentially interesting fizzle out to a weak dissolution, leaving me behind with a “Wait… that’s it?”. So with all that said, this anime has many interesting elements like living as intersex, adoption, the meaning of family, finding a purpose for yourself but they get introduced in the blandest fashion and not expanded upon. If you want this but better, watch Ryvius. Mediocre.

Karakuri Circus: Holy fuck, now this wins the disappointment of the year award. What started as a hot-blooded shounen adventure about three very different people growing closer and developing as characters then quickly derailed into a mess of splitting up these very people, including premise rewrites, flashbacks on ancestors, identity twists and climaxes that never felt like such. This is an anime that kept reinventing itself when there was absolutely no need to do so and turned into a convoluted clusterfuck. I’ll give it that it occasionally found back to its core and heart so every now and then, it managed to muster up some decent pathos, particularly towards the end and never let it be said that I can’t appreciate an Aoi Yuuki goth loli doll but my goodness, what could have been instead. Mediocre.

Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru: Fune wo Amu’s author brings us yet another character-driven novel adaptation that has talented anime staff work on it and apparently both have seen their fare share of rewrites for the better. With that said, did this live up to the high standards of noitaminA’s harmonious tale of creating a dictionary? Oh, it absolutely did. This was generally the best sports anime since Ping Pong and a testimony to successful character writing. It’s funny how I was close to dropping this at first but it improved so much as it went on. It’s hard to find a work with characters that have as charming and flourishing interactions as this and it’s one of the most human anime to date. Its character conflicts were genuinely touching as all of them can’t help but wonder what got them into running and through discovering a new sport, they also discover new parts about themselves. This is character-centric writing at its finest, backed by all around very solid production and a subdued but nonetheless appreciated musical performance. Long story short, this anime is a treasure. So yes, I can easily consider this among the peak of its genre and the best anime of 2019. Very Good.

Lord El-Melloi II Sei no Jikenbo: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note: First of all, the good: Reines is a massive semen demon, like she totally gets that petite & dominant aesthetic right. She also likes putting girls into gothic lolita outfits. And speaking of goth lolis, there’s a cheeky goth loli desparately craving the MC’s attention like you wouldn’t believe it. Then there is also the fact that it’s directed by YagaKimi’s director and that always helps. I suppose it also had some entertaining episodes and I think its approach to being a character study of Waver Velvet was laudable… occasionally. Unfortunately, none of that saved it from being the latest iteration of a full-blown dosis of Fate/Nonsense, this time at its proudest of its deep lore and intricate themes and whatnot. It tries to be less of a typical whodunnit rather than an unconventional whydunnit + magic and I could get behind that (UN-GO, Umineko) but there is only so-much self-wankery Fate babble I can bear and this is an anime that has crossed that line far too often. Mediocre.

Mob Psycho 100 II: Well, it’s the second season of Mob Psycho and essentially follows the concept of being more of the same. After all, never change a winning team, right? And a winning team is assembled here: Ever since Death Billiards, Tachikawa has risen to my list of favorite directors and he has a whole lot of exceedingly gifted animators under his helm with Mob Psycho. Production conditions and the sheer mass of talent continue to astound as they keep defying industry standards. And it’s not like the writing is without its charming points, either. Reigen learning his lesson to become a better human being was a genuinely heartwarming story with the human element that I so very much like attached to it. Unfortunately, however, this season did feel like it was playing things too safe and ultimately was just a big retread of season 01. The first half is the episodic shenanigans, then comes the setup of the new villain gallery and their superiority to the established characters and thereafter, they get plucked apart but not without the continious raising of powerlevels on both sides and Mob losing control before quickly regaining it due to the power of friendship and there you have a new season. I mean, it’s entertaining popcorn kino for sure but also entertaining popcorn kino I’ve seen before. Decent.

Senki Zesshou Symphogear XV: I have made a terrible mistake. Namely letting my backlog actitivities in 2019 be dominated by Symphogear. Which also explains why my anime backlog barely shrank and I instead switched over to live action. Anyway, that was stupid and inconsequential of me. But not as stupid and inconsequential as Symphogear. I am not sure what made me stick with this one for five seasons. For the first three seasons, I still had some hope. You’d oftentimes get promising buildup and then that would collapse. Well, the further we got, the earlier the collapsing began actually. S3 was bad enough to feature a set of very alluring sub antagonists, the Autoscorers (including a goth loli doll no less!) and not do anything with them. I should have quit right then and there but the sunk cost fallacy kept me going. Speaking of going, that’s what the animation quality didn’t do, it actually just kind of went away one third into S2. It made a return in weaker state for S4 and I will never forget the fun sakuga slaughterhouse that was S5 E02 but not much else can be said in my or this show’s defense. I guess it was entertaining enough? It sticked the landing in terms of its themes and character relationship for its last half a minute really well? Mediocre.

Toaru Majutsu no Index III: I think this might have just been the biggest anime monkey’s paw of this decade. When so many people, including myself, kept wishing for S3 to happen… screeching after every new Dengeki Festa disappointment once more… and then it did happen and we all collectively wanted it to unexist… yeah, that was quite a thing, wasn’t it? Anyway, a half-dead J.C. Staff adapting the source material at a breakneck speed isn’t something I’d blame the studio for but it was expectedly disappointing. I liked Measure Heart and Lessar, and occasionally it did get things right, particularly Accel’s character journey towards the end but I had been in the strong belief I actually liked this franchise and turns out I was wrong. Watch Yu-Gi-Oh! for good chuuni entertainment, this is not it. Mediocre.

Vinland Saga: Time for everyone’s critical darling to make an appearance. And who am I to disagree? I own plenty of volumes of the manga and the anime adapted the strongest part of it while making some careful, slight adjustments to the material in terms of writing that all worked out for the better. The anime gave Vinland Saga just the final push to get its themes out a bit better and I appreciate that. Granted, there are some episodes that don’t quite hold up and visual execution for the most part left things to be desired but it’s a gripping, raw tale of a young man stuck with a bunch of vikings doing viking things with memorable characters and events that fans will remember for years to come. Overall, I’m just glad this got an anime as it has cemented once again that Twin Engine is what strengthens anime as a whole like nothing else does in this industry. Very Good.    

W’z: I’ll give this anime one thing – hilarious stealth marketing that completely missed the target. See, this was advertised explicitly as some fujo schlock, specifically having no female characters in its promotional material. Then it turned out to be HandShakers S2 in disguise, featuring plenty female characters such as a female love interest and a yuri couple. I don’t even care about the “why” as others did, it’s just batshit insane and that amuses me. Which I sadly can’t say for the show itself. Granted, I kinda sorta liked the second half of HandShakers against all odds as I really appreciated how it handled its side characters and they brought those back… after a timeskip and that’s potentially interesting but alas, did nothing with them. This largely lacks a plot yet keeps wasting time on everyone sitting around and recapping exactly that. Thanks for nothing, guys? Ultimately, I really can’t say what this was good for or who this was aimed at. And yeah, it also looked like the post-processing garbage dumpster fire you’d expect from GoHands. The few sakuga spectacles (mostly at the beginning and the end, the drought in the middle was just sad) were certainly appreciated but when the other 98% look like a plutonium-infested wasteland… does it really matter? Bad.

Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS: Last but not least, we have… oh wait. That’s wrong. This is least. This is no doubt the worst anime I’ve finished this year by quite the margin. It’s a slow, tedious mess spanning across 120 episodes. It has nothing to say, no story to tell, it has absolutely no characters to speak of whatsoever yet constantly pretends to be this grim drama with a PTSD angle and a revenge plot, a serious character journey with deep takes on cyberspace. Yet its entire virtual reality setting is a hollow gimmick that is to the detriment of the show itself. Nothing interesting is ever attempted with it, and instead, you get ridiculous concepts such as “memory data” floating as bubbles in cyberspace or a character flowing out of a TV to steal someone’s soul in real life, referring to it as “consciousness data”. What? The very concept of teenagers surfing through the Internet on hoverboards could be taken from a 2000 Internet educational book written by boomers with no comprehension of the matter at hand and I suspect that is how much creative thought and energy went into this show. The entire story writing is this huge clusterfuck of an MMO fetch quest grind where characters move from point A to B to get information X telling them that they need to move to point C to unlock a key to gate Y that might tell them about plot point Z, interspersed with a plethora of dull exposition leading nowhere but telling you that things might happen at some point. It has no ethos, pathos, energy, not even characters who want to be part of their own show. None of what the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise should stand for can be found here. I’d like to say that an attempt was made but even that would be a lie. Worse, none of it even yields any results. Several dropped plot points, including the premise, just added insult to injury. If you were to ask me what didn’t go wrong with this show… it’d be very hard to come up with anything substantial at all. I didn’t even have any expectations for this anime and still felt robbed off my time. Very Bad.

Alright, kids, that’s it for my recollections of 2019’s anime! What were your best anime of 2019? Anything I might have missed out on? No need to be shy!

But before we put this to a close, we gotta keep up the annual tradition of handing out comically unrelated awards:

Character From Any Kind Of Media I Could Relate To This Year: A certain overly cynical ojou-sama goth loli doll warming up to her local chicken girl with the good cooking skills.
Something I Am Uncertain About: Whether or not I have finished a single video game this year apart from Frontier finishing itself.
The One True Reason To Get Isekai’d: Fluffy Tail Wolf MILF Winona.
Seriously Tho: Where’s my NoWaYu announcement????!!!
Best Thing I Have Finished This Year: Chernobyl.
The Unholy Semen Demon Who Rules Them All: Reines.
Unexpected KINO Moment I Didn’t See Coming: Sensei confronting Wota being the best life lesson a teacher could give to his student.
Prediction For The Future: The day and age of card game playing goth lolis is near.
The One Anime Adaptation I Truly, Truly Want: Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku Restart.
Most Terrible Announcement Of The Year: Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS.

Well, now wasn’t that some wacky stuff! Anyway, hope you got something out of this!